Shadowpriest Guide (Patch 3.3 Edition)Follow

---How to spec a shadowpriest---

First things first, the race of your priest is now unimportant, none of the racial abilities will make a significant difference to your character so choose what you like.
The first thing to do when creating any new character is to get the spec right. Fortunately in the case of shadowpriests the specs vary very little and are relatively easy to remember but more on that later.

The talents most used in shadowpriest specs are as follows:
Note: Talents marked with (*) are considered pretty much vital in any shadowpriest build and should not be missed out.


Discipline Tree
- Twin Disciplines: 5% increased damage from instant cast spells (5 points)*
- Improved Inner Fire: Increased spellpower from IF. (3 points)*
- Improved Power Word Fortitude: Increased stamina from the fortitude buff (2 points)
- Meditation: Allows 50% of mana regeneration to continue while casting (3 points)*
- Inner Focus: When activated reduces the cost of the next spell by 100% and increases its critical effect chance by 25% (1 point)

The reason for going so far into the discipline tree is to get at least 2 points in meditation. It allows shadowpriests to regenerate mana based on their sprit stat whilst still casting. This is of vital importance since the changes to how haste affects shadowpriests' damage over time spells as the overal use of mana significantly increased with this change. The talents picked up along the way are useful also, improved inner fire giving increased spellpower and twin disciplines giving a flat dps increase on instant cast spells are great. Improved fortitude is used mainly as a filler in this case to get to meditation although it provides some nice utility and is superior to the other talent options.
Inner fire is an optional talent which some shadowpriests choose to take although in general terms it provides relatively little DPS increase for the cost of a talent point.

Shadow Tree
- Sprit tap -> Improved Spirit tap: Allows increased spirit and increased mana regeneration in combat following non DoT critical strikes (5 points)*
- Darkness: Increases shadow spell damage by 10% (5 points)*
- Shadow Affinity: Reduces threat generated by shadow spells (3 points)
- Improved Shadow Word Pain: Increases damage done by SW:P (2 points)*
- Shadow Focus: Increases hit chance by 3% and reduces the cost of shadow spells (3 points)*
- Improved Mind Blast: Reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast (5 points)
- Mind Flay: Allows use of the mind flay spell (1 point)*
- Veiled Shadows: Decreases fade cooldown and shadowfiend cooldown (2 points)*
- Shadow Reach: Increases base range of shadow spells (2 points)
- Shadow Weaving: Gives stacking buff increasing shadow damage (3 points)
- Vampiric Embrace: Regenerates party and personal health based on outgoing damage (2 points)* (1 point at least)
- Improved Vampiric Embrace: Increases the effectiveness of Vampiric Embrace (2 points)
- Focused Mind: Reduces mana cost of various shadow spells (3 points)*
- Mind Melt: Increases critical strike chance of various spells (2 points)*
- Improved Devouring Plague (3 points)*
- Shadowform: The daddy of all talents with far to many effects to list (1 point)*
- Shadow Power: Increases critical strike damage of shadow spells (5 points)*
- Improved Shadowform: Reduces pushback on spells when in shadowform (2 points)*
- Misery: Provides the misery hit debuff on your targets with dots running (3 points)*
- Vampiric Touch: Allows use of vampiric touch and thereby also the replenishment buff (1 point)*
- Pain and suffering: Allows mind flay to refresh SW:P and reduces SW:D backlash (3 points)*
- Twisted Faith: Increases spellpower based on spirit and increases damage on targets affected by DoTs (5 points) *
- Dispersion: Win button that regenerates mana and makes you nigh on indestructible for 6 seconds (1 point)*
The other talents in the shadow tree are largely PvP talents and aren't taken in PvE builds.

Specs
Prior to T10 the most commonly used shadowpriest spec looks something like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbhZZGxfVRfzcfqfzAo
It ticks all the major PvE requirements though some people like to move a couple of points around here and there (shadow affinity is a common choice for certain cases)

However, once you get to the stage of T10 the 4 Set bonus actually increases the damage done by mind flay so much that it appears to beat mind blast in terms of rotation priority. This leads to a build that looks like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbuZZGgf0RfzffqfzAo

Note that the points previously spent in Improved Mind Blast have been reallocated to Inner Focus, Shadow Affinity and Improved VE. These spare points obviously allow for more variations although these are the most likely choices. I haven't been able to test this setup myself yet, although from what I can tell it should be better suited once the set bonus is achieved.

Glyphs
Shadowpriest Glyphs are very easy to choose, the best ones are:
Glyph of Shadow
Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain
Glyph of Mind Flay
Glyph of Mind Sear/Glyph of Dispersion (These are utility glyphs which are useful in certain boss encounters and are also valid choices)

Glyph of Fading
Glyph of Fortitude
Glyph of Levitate



Edited, Jan 26th 2010 11:53pm by thegreatmothra

---Spells and Related Addons---

Shadowpriests have 6 primary single target damage dealing spells, these are:
Vampiric Touch (VT)
Devouring Plague (DP)
Shadow Word: Pain (SW:P)
Mind Blast (MB)
Mind Flay (MF)
Shadow Word: Death (SW:D)
The notations in brackets are the commonly accepted abbreviations of the spell names and are widely used when discussing shadowpriest spells.
Note to newcomers: Damage over time spells like VT DP and SW:P are referred to as DoTs in shorthand.

Single Target
The way that shadow priests use these spells is to cast them in a priority system, that is, the spell with the highest priority should always take prescedence over spells with lower priority. The priority sequence (from highest priority to lowest) for the most part is as follows:
VT
DP
(SW:P) This should be constantly be refreshed by mind flay so should only be cast once for the most part.
MB
MF
SW:D

As you can see, the highest priority for the spell rotation is to keep the DoT spells rolling. Following that the priority is to cast Mind Blast and then Mind Flay. SW:D can be used as a filler spell for cases where you are waiting for mind blast to come off cooldown in about a second or so.

Post T10 4 set bonus
Yes, it strikes again. With the set bonus from this tier the priority order actually appears to change to this:
VT
DP
(SW:P) This should be constantly be refreshed by mind flay so should only be cast once for the most part.
MF
MB
SW:D

In this case MB is used more as a filler spell, and to proc replenishment of course. It is uncertain whether or not this is intended by Blizzard or whether or not they are going to do anything about it. Nevertheless, this is how things appear to stand for now.


Multiple Target Strategy
One of the ares in which Shadowpriests alongside affliction warlocks really shine is the ability to be damaging many targets at once. in fights like this you have two choices.
1) You can use Mind Sear. Mind Sear is an amazing AoE spell, it gives you AoE damage second only to mages and is great for large groups and encounters where you have more than 3 targets active at once. In these cases mind sear is almost always the best choice.
2) You can DoT multiple targets. This is where the true ability of a good shadowpriest shines through. This strategy is a must when dealing with groups of 3 or fewer targets and in large groups where the targets are not close enough to cover with a Mind Sear effectively. The aim is to keep VT, DP and SW:P rolling on your primary target and VT and SW:P rolling on your other targets. This means you will need to be switching targets as necessary and reapplying VT or refreshing SW:P where appropriate, try to prioritise refreshing SW:P first because if you let it drop off a target you will wind up having to recast it and eat into your precious casting time (as well as sucking your mana dry). The best way to practice this is to go to your local major city and practice keeping your dots rolling on 3 target dummies at once. Once you have that down you can start weaving MB into the mix to keep replenishment up. It isn't an easy skill but it is definitely worth your while once you know how.


Addons
As you can probably guess, things are going to get complicated unless we have some help working out which spell we should be casting next. There are various addons that are designed for this purpose and a few of my favourites are listed below.
Dot Timers - YOU WILL NEED A GOOD DOT TIMER, I cannot stress this enough. The dot timer addon is going to feed you the most information about the spells you currently have active on your target(s) and is integral to playing a shadowpriest.
-Dotimer
-DebufFilter
-EventHorizon
-Classtimers

Cast Bar - Replaces the nasty blizzard cast bar with one that shows your latency. This is important because if your latency is above 200 or so it will noticably impact your damage. By having a cast bar which shows your latency you can start casting your next spell when the cast bar reaches the marked latency are at the end of it.
-Quartz (also can be used to track DoTs and marks your latency area in red)

The rest of your addons are largely at your discression and I won't take up needless space reeling of pages and pages of them, but the cast bar and DoT timer really are important to get right.



Edited, Jan 26th 2010 11:48pm by thegreatmothra

Edited, Jan 26th 2010 11:53pm by thegreatmothra

This is exactly what we need! The old one was extremely out of date.

Skimming through this, everything looks to be easy to understand and well-written. However, the talk about dropping Mind Blast post-T10 was I felt a bit unclear. It seemed as if you could begin dropping MB from the priority once you obtained 4pc T10, while it's really much more complex than that. It depends on if you have 4pc T10 in addition to the amount of haste and spellpower you have. For example, gearing more haste would mean you would require less spellpower to reach this point, and gearing more spellpower means you would need less haste to reach this point as well. Meaning that you could be using Mind Blast regularly, but drop it during a Heroism/Bloodlust. That's confusing, I know, but the second link I posted below this has the exact numbers required before dropping MB is a benefit.

The math is showing that the number to shoot for to drop MB is (with 4 piece bonus Tier 10) over 900 haste and 4443 spell power. This is all while buffed, of course.

The link I posted below has (much) more detail.

Source.

The post in that thread I'm getting my numbers from.

All I'm saying is that it's not really as clear-cut as you make it seem.

Also, I suggest putting in something about clipping DoTs. After learning about that, my dps shot up by about 500.


Edited, Jan 26th 2010 9:56pm by IDrownFish

So, when is this ready for the sticky request?

Also, thank you! :3

Shouldn't the weapon enchant be black magic? Unless you are haste capped? Don't quote me on this, but I thought that I had read over at elitist jerks(may have been shadowpriest.com) that the proc rate, value, and internal CD had made Black Magic equivalent to about 92 static spellpower, which is higher than either the staff or 1-handed enchant.

I'm going to have to look it up.

Edit to add:


He could just link the page for the talent, just like you do with gear, like this Spirit Tap.

That way you get both the description of the spell by mousing over it, and you can explain it's usefulness as well, without taking up a lot of body space.

Oh wait, are you suggesting he not even bother explaining each talent, and just link the specs and explain the overall spec?

Edited, Jan 27th 2010 9:31am by SynnTastic

Yes.
Explaining each talent mostly just adds a lot of text that people aren't going to read anyway.
Explaining the talent build and some important parts of it (the preference talent points and such) gives more info and less text.



And as a fellow sticky writer, it's a god damned lot of work and you always miss a lot

Thanks Mothra - I wouldn't be surprised if this sticky makes the priest boards the most up to date class boards on Alla =P. While you've already received my rate ups, I still need to thoroughly read this at some point to crank up my shadow priest knowledge. I'll make a mental note of that now.

Edit: Actually, it's less worse than I had in my mind. The druid, hunter, paladin and shaman FAQs all seem firmly up to date as well. The stickies for the remaining five classes are all pretty grossly outdated, though.

Edited, Jan 28th 2010 5:38am by Mozared

Well duh.

A couple of things that may want to be added for clarity:
The SP from IF does not occur until L71- this may cause some confusion to lower level priests who spec into it and notice no SP boost.
Vampiric Embrace is a single point talent.
If, for some reason, you choose not to be specced 3/3 Misery, remember that the rest of the casters in your group are probably counting on you for 3% of their hit, and it is imperative that you let the rl know. (There really is no reason to not be 3/3, just emphasizing an expectation of others from your class.)

Great post. I have heard some rumblings among among shadowpriests regarding Black Magic enchant if you are MH+OH. Any current info regarding that?

Alliance gearing protip: Keep one piece of gear with 1% hit on you for when you are not with a Draenei. The emblem wand is a good choice if you have a better normal alternative.

*edit I really should read the whole thread before posting. /facepalm

Edited, Jan 30th 2010 7:09am by Trylofer

Should this be unstickied?

Edited, Nov 25th 2010 3:55pm by Xsarus

Word, shadow mastery changed with the last patch.

Still IDrownfish, make a wiki page and get started now. Will make the process easier.